-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Few female Chinese artists have attained the level of international recognition that sculptor Xiang Jing enjoys .

Her work has been exhibited in America and throughout Europe . She was the subject of a recent joint survey show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai . She was one of four winners of this year 's Martell Artists of the Year competition and was also recently featured in Italian Vogue .

Xiang first garnered attention for her sculptures of women . Working in porcelain , bronze and fiberglass , her figures are often nude , slouching , and wearing vacant or depressed expressions .

`` Your Body , '' a 2.6-meter-high fiberglass sculpture made in 2005 was collected by the Saatchi Gallery . A seated , slouching and vacant-eyed nude woman with a scar on her abdomen , sagging breasts and fat rolls , critic Gao Shiming , a dean at the China Academy of Art , has described the work as an expression of `` fatigue ... emptiness and helplessness . ''

The effect of Xiang 's work is often disquieting , even though her figures are recognizable . According to curator and critic Lilly Wei , Xiang 's `` sense of social satire is anchored in the commonplace , in the daily exigencies and social exchanges of an ordinary woman 's life , in the small vanities , frauds and violations . ''

Xiang says her work is always a kind of ongoing philosophical inquiry .

`` From the day we are born , we have many , many questions -- all kinds of questions from what we see , what we experience and what we know .

`` I think art is possibly one of the ways , one of the channels , to help us to find out certain truths , '' she says .

Her sculptures of women , for instance , are an attempt `` to deal with everything that had to do with female existence . ''

But , she says , `` after a while , if you work on a deeper level , you will discover that whether male or female , you 're ultimately dealing with human nature . In other words , the deeper you go , you move further away from gender but you get closer to human nature . ''

More than gender politics , she is interested in human relationships . `` Individuals are in fact very alien , very distant to each other . However , as we 're collective animals , social animals , we all end up in a kind of a relationship ... I think we 're like two neighboring islands , gradually getting close to each other . ''

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Raised in Beijing by an editor and film studio director , Xiang studied at Beijing 's Central Academy of Fine Arts , graduating in 1995 .

One of the first artists to make an impression on her was Tian Shixin , a sculptor from Guizhou whose work Xiang first saw when she was at high school . It was the first time she had seen sculpture that was n't a politically-freighted monument or memorial , she says . `` He had created an emotional state of human beings . ''

But Xiang 's process is too personal to be inspired by anyone or anything else .

In fact , she rejects the notion of inspiration altogether . `` I do n't think art is like design , when one can have an inspiration here or an inspiration there . ''

`` Art is more the expression of your points of view , or whatever you want to express in the long process of your understanding -- often it has a very long thread throughout . ''

Every three years , Xiang puts on a solo show containing series of works that represent a particular line of questioning , she says .

Typically , she draws a rough sketch with measurements marked in , which her assistants use as the basis for creating a steel framework . Xiang then uses clay to shape a form , from which a plaster mold is created , which she then paints .

The production phase is physically exhausting for Xiang . `` Every time when I work on something , I would eat very little and sleep very little and become very , very thin . ''

But , she says , `` the most challenging part of the whole creation is the initial thinking process , '' something she describes as `` painful , '' even `` torturing . ''

`` The actual work ... I can complete it within a year or a year and a half . But before that , I have to think for a long , long time ... trying hard to convince myself . ''

She says she does n't use photographs or work from models : `` It all comes from my head . ''

Although her sculptures are strikingly lifelike , Xiang says she is n't aiming for realism .

`` If you put a real person 's face next to it , you will see a lot of differences . But what matters to me is ... the poignance of the expression . ''

`` I want my art to awaken the sensibility of each onlooker , to awaken his body , so that his body can experience the sculpture . That 's why I really want people to stand right in front of my sculpture , to face -LRB- it -RRB- . ''

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Xiang knows she is living in an interesting period of Chinese history . `` I was born in 1968 . We 've gone through the Cultural Revolution , then the Reform and Opening Up period , then the recent years of rapid economic growth .

`` These have been the decades when China has gone through the most dramatic , the fastest changes ever . And contemporary Chinese art has been born and developed within these last 30 years . ''

What that means for Xiang personally is not yet clear , though . Being thrown into the cross currents of history is , she says , `` good fortune '' on one hand , but she also says , `` I 'm not very adaptable . ''

In fact , an artist heralded by critics and collectors as exemplary of exciting new developments in a still-developing world , says she often feels out of step .

`` I feel that I 'm gradually becoming more and more alien to this era , as I feel that the world has become more and more extrovert , more and more superficial .

`` It 's become ever so easy to know , to see and to experience too many things . The ways for us to get to know the world have become more and more diverse . There are more and more channels ... and more and more platforms .

`` People have become ... more and more extroverted . However , I think there should be another part that should look inward ... into an inner world ... a world that exists within us . And this world is n't small at all . In fact , it can be enormous . ''

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Xiang Jing attracted international attention with her large-scale sculptures of women

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Her work is held by the Saatchi Gallery and has been exhibited throughout Europe .

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Her sculptures are the result of ongoing philosophical inquiry , Xiang says .

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Although representative of a new generation of artists , Xiang says she feels alien to our information era .